20 Years after Raj Reddy launched the Million Book Project we explore the impact of bringing millions of books online.

Turing Award-winning computer scientist, Raj Reddy, has always been a techno-optimist. In 2001, the Carnegie Mellon University professor launched the Universal Digital Library or Million Book Project, with the goal to create a free-to-read, searchable collection of one million books, available to everyone over the Internet.

With funding from the National Science Foundation and partners in the United States, China, India and Egypt, the Million Book Project was the first global project to digitize books at a huge scale. In North America, it inspired a new generation of librarians and technologists to carry on the work. From Google Books, to University of Toronto Libraries ambitious digital collections, to the Internet Archive's Open Libraries, tens of millions of books have been digitized and brought online, now available for research, data mining, greater accessibility, and sheer reading pleasure.

This year, Reddy’s Million Book Project turns 20. In this virtual symposium, we will trace the evolution of book digitization at scale and look at the impact and new platforms using it.

From the Wikimedia Foundation's "Turn All References Blue" initiative to HathiTrust's accomplishments in empowering accessibility and research, we explore the enduring legacy of the Million Book Project with its founder, Raj Reddy.

What is unlocked when millions of books are online?

20 years later, what does Professor Reddy predict for the future?